EXCLUSIVE: The Sundance Film Festival has emerged as one of the craziest for deal making in recent memory. After a wild all-night negotiating session following a raucous premiere screening yesterday of The Way, Way Back, Fox Searchlight has emerged as the frontrunner to acquire domestic rights and several other territories. The price tag is around $10 million minimum guarantee, with a P&A and theatrical commitment.
Searchlight was among bidding distributors that include Lionsgate, FilmDistrict, Paramount Pictures, and Warner Bros. Buyers began mobilizing right after the film's Monday 3:30 PM first screening at Eccles Theatre, and numerous sources have been telling me all night that this has been one of the most spirited auctions in recent Sundance memory.
Related: SUNDANCE DEAL PRECEDENT: Relativity Media Pact For Joseph Gordon-Levitt Comedy Don Jon's Addiction: $4 Mill Upfront, $25 Million P&A For Summer Release
By the time the deal gets closed this morning, it should also be just about the richest deal ever made at the festival, as the sale of additional foreign territories will raise the value of the deal even higher. The rabid pace of deal making and the high numbers are a surprise to me, because both buyers and sellers expected the films to go in low upfront deals. Then, the buyers started discovering an exceptional crop of films programmed by Sundance.
Just yesterday, Deadline revealed that the Joseph Gordon-Levitt-directed Don Jon's Addiction went to Relativity Media in another precedent-setting deal that brought $4 million minimum guarantee and a whopping $25 million P&A commitment. In its own way, the total value of The Way, Way Back deal will rival any made at the festival, including another Steve Carell-starrer, Little Miss Sunshine.
Directed and scripted by Oscar-winning The Descendants scribes Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, The Way, Way Back stars Carell, Sam Rockwell, Toni Collette, Allison Janney, Maya Rudolph and Liam James. It's the coming of age story of a 14-year old introvert who spends a summer forming unlikely friendships with the prickly manager and the misfit workers at a run down water park. Pic is a co-production between OddLot Entertainment and Sycamore Pictures and the film was shot in Massachusetts. Kevin Walsh produced with Sycamore's Tom Rice and OddLot's Gigi Pritzker is exec producer with Faxon, Rash, and Sycamore's Ben Nearn and George Parra.
This deal is still being negotiated by WME Global and CAA and attorney Craig Emanuel, and I'll let you know how it ends up when it closes this morning. Sierra/Affinity is selling foreign. By all accounts, The Way, Way Back is an exceptional crowd-pleasing film that will have wide appeal, but the avid buyer appetite certainly will help as films like The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman, Before Midnight, Ain't Them Bodies Saints and others become the focus of attention from the distributors that didn't get this film.
This caps a remarkable 24 hours of dealmaking that has included the Don Jon's Addiction deal, a strong sale to The Weinstein Company for Fruitvale at around $2 million and theatrical commitments, and a $4.5 million deal by Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions and Sony Pictures Classics for Austenland.
There will certainly be pressure on all these films to perform, but it has been fun as hell to cover. If you're going to stay up all night waiting to chronicle sales, it's gratifying that they are electric when they happen.
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